A lithotripsy medical procedure consists of breaking a stone or other hardened mass into fragments, typically in a body lumen such as the bladder, so that the stone no longer affects operation of the lumen. The procedure inherently creates fragments of the stone being broken, and in a successful procedure the fragments are sufficiently small so that operation of the lumen is no longer affected.
US Patent Publication 2011/0054363, to Cain et al., whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a device that delivers lithotripsy therapy to a patient so as to fractionate urinary stones in the patient. The device is claimed to be configured target and track urinary stones.
PCT Patent Publication 2011/133922, to Bailey et al., whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a method for detecting stones by ultrasound, in which the ultrasound reflections from a stone are preferentially selected and accentuated relative to the ultrasound reflections from blood or tissue. The disclosure also describes displaying a stone as it is pushed in real time.
Japanese Patent Publication 05-076539, to Aida Satoshi et al., whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a stone crushing device using a piezoelectric element. The device is claimed to exactly irradiate only a stone so as to decrease side effects.
US Patent Publication 2011/0074943, to Modell et al., whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes an imager configured to generate a plurality of frames at a frame frequency greater than an electromagnetic energy emission pulse frequency of a medical device. In the disclosure, an imaging system is claimed to be able to be used to locate a stone and to appropriately target treatment such that pulses are aimed at the place where the stone is located.
PCT Patent Publication 2013/154708, to Chia et al., whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a surgical laser system for use in fragmenting of targeted kidney or bladder stones. The system has a laser probe which is optically coupled to a beam combiner and which is configured to output a combined laser pulse train.
Documents incorporated by reference in the present patent application are to be considered an integral part of the application except that to the extent any terms are defined in these incorporated documents in a manner that conflicts with the definitions made explicitly or implicitly in the present specification, only the definitions in the present specification should be considered.